8 papers win Grand Slam honors in APSE contest

The Kansas City Star, The New York Times and The Washington Post, competing in the over-175,000 circulation division, earned top-10 recognition for their daily, Sunday and special sections to augment a top-10 website award previously announced in Class A website division (over 2 million monthly unique visitors).

The Buffalo News and Omaha (Neb.) World Herald won top-10 section awards in the 75,001-175,000 circulation division as well as top-10 in the Class B website division (500,000 to 1.9 million monthly unique visitors).

The Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World and Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News won top-10 section awards in the under 30,000 circulation division as well as top-10 in the Class C website division (under 500,000 monthly unique visitors).

The Opelika-Auburn (Ala.) News won top-10 section awards in the under 15,000 circulation division as well as top-10 in the Class C website division.

The APSE awards, voted on by sports editors from across the nation during four days of judging, honor work published in 2012.

Eleven newspapers won Triple Crowns, signifying top 10 honors in three of the four section/website categories. Those include:

— Class C (30,000-75,000): The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.; The State in Columbia, S.C.; The National of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

— Class D (under 30,000): The Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne.

— Class E: (under 15,000): Columbia Missourian.

The New York Times led all news organizations with nine writing awards. The Knoxville News Sentinel won seven.

Dan DeLuca, of The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press, led the individual writing awards, capturing five honors including beat writing, breaking news, projects and two in multimedia in the 30,000-75,000 circulation category.

Jason Wolf won four writing awards — two in the 75,000-175,000 category for The News Journal of Wilmington, Del. (projects and explanatory), and two for his former paper, the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record, in features and explanatory.

Ryan Wood won four awards in the 30,000-and-under category, including three for the Opelika-Auburn (Ala.) News and one for his former paper, the DeKalb (Ill.) Daily Chronicle. He won features writing twice, explanatory and beat writing.

The top five finalists in the writing categories will be announced in April. Winners will receive their awards in June at the APSE summer convention in Chicago.